About the Live Course
Through weekly live sessions, guided mindfulness and somatic practices, reflection prompts, and simple daily exercises, you'll create dedicated space for your own practice within a supportive community of fellow practitioners.
Together, we'll explore how to work skillfully with stress, strengthen your capacity for presence, listen more deeply to the wisdom of the body, and cultivate greater clarity, balance, and ease in the midst of a full and meaningful life.
Live participation is encouraged, and recordings will be available for participants who need to miss a session.
Facilitated by Dr. Cynthia Garner
Dr. Cynthia Garner is a mindfulness teacher, author, educator, and somatic coach dedicated to helping people cultivate greater awareness, resilience, and wellbeing.
Her work weaves together mindfulness, nervous system awareness, somatic inquiry, and healthy boundaries, drawing on decades of experience in education and trauma-informed mind-body approaches to healing.
Cynthia is the author of Fierce Boundaries: Practical Skills and Somatic Exercises for Healing in a Traumatized World and has trained extensively in mindfulness-based approaches through organizations including UC San Diego School of Medicine, the Centre for Mindfulness Studies, Mindful Schools, Inward Bound Mindfulness Education, and the Hakomi Institute. She is also a former classroom teacher, a long-time meditator, a solo mom, and a firm believer that our nervous systems shape the quality of our relationships and that healing unfolds through small, consistent acts of presence, compassion, and care.
Who is this program for?
This program is designed for thoughtful, caring people whose lives and work are rooted in service, healing, teaching, caregiving, or contemplative practice.
You understand the value of mindfulness, somatic awareness, and healthy boundaries because you have experienced their impact firsthand. You may have spent years studying, teaching, or sharing these practices with others. At the same time, you may recognize a longing for more space, more balance, and a deeper commitment to your own wellbeing.
The Mindful Boundaries Foundations Program is for people who want to deepen their mindfulness, somatic awareness, and boundary-setting practice in service of a life that feels more sustainable, soul-aligned, and embodied.
Whether you are supporting clients, students, patients, family members, community members, or fellow practitioners, this program offers a supportive container for strengthening the practices that allow you to show up with greater presence, clarity, compassion, and access to your inner wisdom. It is an opportunity to step out of the role of provider for a little while and become the receiver. It is your turn to rest into the practice, and to make space for you to be the one who is supported, nourished, and held.
Together, we will explore what it means to cultivate a sustainable foundation of mindfulness, self-care, and healthy boundaries that supports both your wellbeing and the meaningful work you are here to do.
FAQ
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Who is the course designed for?
Mindful Boundaries Foundations is designed for therapists, educators, caregivers, coaches, healthcare professionals, and heart-centered leaders, as well as anyone who wants practical tools for reducing stress, strengthening healthy boundaries, and cultivating greater wellbeing.
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Do I need prior experience with mindfulness or meditation?
Not at all. Whether you're brand new to mindfulness or have an established practice, you'll receive practical, accessible tools that can be integrated into everyday life.
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How much daily mindfulness practice do I need to do to see the benefit?
Informal practice has a tremendous amount of benefit, so even without formal periods of sitting meditation you will likely see a change, simply by shifting your attention and healing your relationship to yourself. However, you will get out of this course what you put into it. Think of carving out time for practice as an investment in your future self. The invitation is to build this time in as a non-negotiable, rather than try to “fit it in”, and see if you can look at it as an opportunity to give yourself and your community the gift of steadiness, responsivity, and the capacity to stabilize your attention in the midst of high stress.
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Is this a therapy group?
No. This is an educational mindfulness and wellbeing program. While the practices are trauma-informed and therapeutically informed, the course is not psychotherapy or a substitute for mental health treatment.
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What if I can't attend a live session?
All sessions will be recorded and made available to enrolled participants, so you can watch or revisit them at your convenience.
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How long is the live course?
The course includes six weekly live sessions, each approximately 90 minutes, along with downloadable resources and recordings.
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How will learning mindfulness help me to manage my anxiety?
The skills taught are evidence-based and specifically chosen to support you in regulating your nervous system, changing your relationship to stress, and building your toolkit for responding to challenges and managing reactivity. The core skills we will practice are those of placing attention on an anchor in the present moment, shifting attention with attention, and sustaining attention with curiosity and care. You’ll develop the ability to be the conductor of your own attention, reclaim your power through taking agency, and gain valuable information through inquiry of your own experience.
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How does my own individual wellbeing affect the people I work with?
Harvard and other leading research universities have done multiple studies and have concluded that our emotional states, such as happiness and anxiety are contagious, rippling outward up to three times removed. This ripple effect means that in teaching mental fitness and focused attention in trauma-impacted systems, there is an opportunity to not only provide tools for calming the nervous system and cultivating present-moment awareness, but also to investigate social justice and foster the capacities for discernment, attunement, right speech, and wise action in the collective. Our nervous systems are built for co-regulation. And even though we are living in a world and in a society that so often drives us away from each other, connecting with our shared human experience can bring us back to each other and home to ourselves.